Ken Shigley is a Golf Performance Trainer at Capital City Club in Atlanta, Georgia.
I consider golf to be a sport that warrants attention to one’s body. You don’t have to slam it like Bryson does, but to maximize performance, I suggest golfers spend two or three days per week in the gym. After all, without the fitness aspect of game improvement, golfers will always be playing catch-up with their more fitness-minded playing partners and opponents. Our challenge is not in delivering this service, but in creating the awareness needed for golf fitness training to grow.
Though our club has offered fitness training programs for several years, we’re just a few months into our golf-specific fitness training efforts. In addition, we’re planning a fitness center upgrade this year that will provide many new opportunities to work with members on their health and wellness, as well as on their golf game.
To address these issues, we recently implemented a golf performance program that combines the skills and expertise of our club’s fitness staff, PGA Professional team and Dr. Rhett Roberson, a doctor of Physical Therapy and co-founder of Club PT, a com-pany that contracts with local golf clubs to facilitate programs such as this one. They are currently working with 20 clubs like ours.
The first event held to bring awareness to our efforts was a range day during which we set up 20-minute blocks of time for members to meet with me, Rhett and Jim Goergen, our PGA Director of Instruction, so we can break down each member’s golf swing from three different perspectives. We put a brochure together with all the pertinent informa-tion we thought would pique interest in this program, and did an email blast to reinforce the importance of our efforts. We filled every slot that day.
Subsequent to that introductory session, members initiate their participation in the program by reserving time with Rhett first and foremost. He performs a TPI assessment to aid in individualizing the program, and will refer the member to either me or Jim, depending upon the golfer’s needs. If they have medical issues warranting Rhett’s expertise, he will further engage with the member to ensure those issues are addressed on his end.
Each member’s personal program will hinge upon their physical attributes and deficiencies, their goals and their level of commitment. If they’re already seeing a PGA Professional for golf instruction, we will tie that individual into our communication to ensure we’re all on the same page.
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